The McDonald's Crime

The cackle echoed through the small, dirty car parked in the McDonald's parking lot. The cackler was a mentally unstable man named Gerald Yearling, who was wearing a long, dark coat with four pockets, who had a thin coating of stubble tickling his chin, whose hair was long, dirty, and unkempt, and who reeked of all the beers he had drank the night before.

The car was a black honda.

Gerald Yearling had a plan. He was going to march into McDonald’s with two handguns under his coat. Each handgun had fifteen bullets. He was going to calmly order his usual- a Big Mac with fries and a large coke- and, when the person behind the counter handed him his order, he was going to put six bullets through the large, plastic sculpture of the idiotic Ronald McDonald, six through the plexiglass surrounding the children’s play area, six through the cashier, six through the nearest child, and, for good measure, six through his Big Mac.

Then he was going to put the money on the counter, walk out, drive away, and eat his fries and coke while watching soccer on the TV. It was a foolproof plan.

Gerald smiled, patted his coat to make sure that the handguns were still there, and stepped out of his car. He stretched, walked over to McDonald’s, held the door open for an old lady, checked his watch, and strolled in. Everything was going according to the plan.

Except for the fact that someone had already done it for him.

His jaw dropped. He just couldn’t believe it. He had looked forward to this all week, and now, along comes someone to spoil it for him. Not only that, but they’d done it in the most irritating manner: Copying his own plan down to the last detail. It was uncanny. There were the six holes in Ronald McDonald and the plexiglass, there was the young black-haired cashier lying on the floor with blood pooling around her, there was the huge cluster of people around what he assumed to be the body of the dead child, and, most annoying of all, there was the Big Mac on the counter with six holes drilled through it and the $10.00 on the counter with a slight bloodstain on it.

He licked his thumb and wiped the bloodstain off.

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